Amazon will be offering more education benefits to its US employees. The Company is planning to fully fund the education of its frontline employees, by covering 100 per cent cost of college tuition, as well as high school diplomas, GEDs, and English as a Second Language (ESL) proficiency certifications. Additionally, Amazon will also add three new skilling programmes to train people in the area of data-centre maintenance and technology, IT, and user experience and research design. Even employees who have been working in the front line for less than three months are eligible for the programme.
By the end of 2025, Amazon will invest $1.2 billion in this project. Under this programme, 7,50,000 employees will be eligible for 100 per cent funding of associate and bachelor’s degrees, via the Company’s tie-ups with 100 universities. Apart from this, under the Career Choice programme, Amazon will also fund high-school completion, GEDs, and ESL proficiency certifications for its employees. Interestingly, Amazon employees can enjoy these benefits as long as they are associated with the Company, with no limit to their tenure.
What is even better is that Amazon plans to pay the employees their tuition fee in advance instead of reimbursing later.
Among the additional skill-development programmes introduced at Amazon, the first is at AWS, which will train new recruits in skills required in data centre technicians and operations technicians so that employees can learn on the job and grow internally by availing new opportunities within.
Surege2IT is a programme for IT employees at Amazon, who can further skill themselves in IT skills and get highly-paid roles within the Company.
The UXDR Apprenticeship programme combines instructor-led training and real-world experience in a one-year programme that offers employees the opportunity to learn and develop skills in research and design on teams across Amazon, including Prime Video, Alexa, AWS and Amazon Fashion.
